Affinity
by butterflie
Summary: He'd never even known magic existed until he came to Spira. In Zanarkand it was always just a fantasy in a fairytale. Tidus, Lulu, Yuna; ficlet


Disclaimer: Square's, not mine.

Author's Notes: Written for the 50episodes comm on livejournal, in which you write a scene or segment of a fic based on a theme. Really, this is more of a ficlet. Oops? Also, the fiend mentioned in this, online it was listed as a "Gandawera" but in the BradyGames guide it's Gandarva, so that's what I went with.

Affinity  
by: butterflie

The first time he'd tried to do a Water spell under Lulu's careful guidance, he'd gotten horribly sick to his stomach. He could tolerate water when doing blitz--he focused his mind on the ball and the players, and didn't think about what awful substance was surrounding him. But having to focus completely on the water, to become familiar--almost _intimate_--with the element, he didn't think he could handle that.

Tidus hated water.

He knew how crazy that sounded. He was an ace blitzer, star champ of the Zanarkand Abes, he spent most of his time in a houseboat, his _whole life_ revolved around water--

He hated it, nonetheless. Worse still, he felt guilty about it. He should have felt thankful for the presence of water in his life. It indirectly gave him a purpose, a focus, with blitz. It also took his old man away.

That was the part that confused him. He should have been glad for that--he hated his old man. But instead, he hated the water for it. He'd been living under his old man's shadow ever since his disappearance ten years ago, and it was all because of the water.

Then there was Sin. Well, Sin was Jecht really, but either way Sin/Jecht had come from the water and taken away everything he'd ever known and loved, and then carried him to a strange place where he'd been separated from Auron. Left behind, cold and alone... in water.

He hated water.

"You have to focus harder," Lulu told him, and he wanted to try, he wanted to be able to learn magic so that he could be a better help in battles that needed more of an elemental touch, but somehow he could never manage to form more than a small sphere of water, no bigger than a pyreflie really.

She was frustrated with him. She thought he wasn't taking it seriously, that he wasn't trying hard enough--and okay, maybe he wasn't trying as hard as he could, but it wasn't because he didn't _want_ to. He just... couldn't.

He couldn't explain this to her, though. She thought it would be easy for him. She thought it would just come naturally. He was an ace blitzer, his whole life revolved around water, it was a piece of cake, right?

He'd never even known magic existed until he came to Spira. In Zanarkand it was always just a fantasy in a fairytale. How in the world could it be natural?

Eventually Lulu quit trying to teach him. And sure, he felt bad about it--but at the same time he was relieved. He didn't know how to reach that level of intimacy, to pour all of his _being_ into an element in order to manipulate it. Just the thought of it made him queasy. But no one saw that, save for maybe Auron who'd raised him and knew him better than anyone. No one questioned him though, and he decided that enough of the others knew the Water spell, and that would have to be good enough to keep them safe.

Then came the Gandarva. They had been making their way through Mushroom Rock Road, at the behest of that creep Seymour, and somehow he and Yuna had got to talking and lagged behind the group. Auron had told them twice to make haste and keep up, and they had tried, but somehow they had only wound up further behind.

It came out of nowhere, a jolt of lightning that flew from the sky and struck the ground a mere five inches from where Yuna stood. He thought, stupidly, that it was from a storm. No rain, no thunder, no other lightning, but his first thoughts still screamed storm. A habit of living in a magic-less Zanarkand.

He froze and looked up to the sky, and it was then he saw the Gandarva darting around in the air above them. They'd encountered a couple of the fiends already, and Tidus thoroughly hated them.

It noticed them noticing it, and let out a high-pitched sort of shriek, sending another spark of Thunder magic hurtling down towards them. They tried to dodge, but of all the times for it to happen Yuna stumbled, and took the hit full force in the back. She cried out and went down, her mouth already whispering the words to a Cure spell even as she fell. Tidus could only watch helplessly, his sword and quick speed utterly useless in aerial battles.

He looked ahead, but where were the others? Had they really gotten so far separated from them? He wasn't sure what to do. He remembered Wakka pummeling the fiends with his blitzball quite a bit, and Lulu... Lulu had used a Water spell.

Water. Why was it always water? _Everything_ was water, and Yuna had finished her spell, and gotten back on her feet, but she had yet to learn any offensive magic, and still there was no sign of the others, so it was apparently a choice of embracing the water or _dying_, and he certainly didn't want to die--

There was no time to think about it. The Gandarva was attacking again, choosing Yuna as its target, perhaps considering her as the weaker of the two. Or maybe saving the weakest for last, who really knew?

She went down again, hurt bad but still bravely defending herself. She briefly glanced over at him. He met her eyes, and swallowed. He recalled everything he could on all the things Lulu had said to him about the elements, but this time he didn't think about it, didn't focus on the _water_.

Instead, he treated it like a blitz game. The Gandarva was his goal, and the Water spell was his blitzball. There were just fifteen seconds left on the clock, and he only had one chance to make this shot, one chance to win the game for the Abes. He concentrated on the goal and took aim.

Much later, when the others had finally backtracked for them and Rikku was helping Yuna tend to her magic burns, Lulu came over to him. "Did you know," she said conversationally, "that those fiends have a very high magical defense?"

"Really?" He felt sick.

"Yes. I have to work in tandem with Wakka to bring them down, and I'm no casual magic user."

He didn't want to think about what he'd done. He _hated_ water, it ruled his whole life, he'd felt so _connected_ to it doing the spell properly for the first time, he never wanted to feel that again--

"It would seem," she said, "that you have a natural affinity for water."

Tidus sighed.

He really, really hated water.


End file.
